ZURICH, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Austria will start building new facilities to better protect its borders, notably the one with Italy, Chancellor Werner Faymann said in an interview published on Sunday, underlining efforts to limit admissions of migrants.

Austria recently built a 3.7 km (2.3 mile) fence at its busiest border crossing with Slovenia, Spielfeld, saying this would help manage the flow of new arrivals onto its territory.

PRISTINA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The
Kosovo and Macedonian parliaments on Saturday ratified an agreement ending
an eight-year dispute between the two countries over a border region used
by gunmen and smugglers.

The deal, signed late on Friday, was
the culmination of months of negotiations under the auspices of the European
Union and the United States, which has more than 1,000 soldiers patrolling
the zone on the Kosovo side.

"The leadership of both countries
has shown significant resolve and taken a major step forward to ensure
regional stability", the U.S.

SKOPJE, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Macedonia
cautioned on Wednesday against the politicisation of "criminal"
elements in the country, amid growing signs of tension between the authorities
and the ethnic Albanian minority.

The killing of a policeman this month
and a row over the use of the Albanian flag have fuelled fears of political
instability in Macedonia, just as the West tries to resolve the fate of
2 million independence-seeking Albanians in neighbouring Kosovo.

MALA RECICA, Macedonia, Sept 25 (Reuters)
- A decision by Macedonia's prime minister to keep former guerrillas out
of government threatens progress made under a 2001 peace pact that ended
an insurgency, the insurgents' leader said on Monday.

Ali Ahmeti, who is now leader of the
Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's
move had dented public trust and that a lack of trust was at the root of
the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s.

SKOPJE, March 13 (Reuters) - Macedonia
voted on Sunday in local elections which the West hopes will pave the way
for full implementation of a 2001 peace deal with Albanian rebels.

Officials reported only a handful of
irregularities and "minor incidents" as voters elected officials
who will carry out a government-backed decentralisation deal which will
give the 25 percent Albanian minority greater local autonomy.

The changes, which have stirred resentment,
represent the final pillar of the Ohrid accord brokered by …

SKOPJE, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A
political party led by a former ethnic Albanian guerrilla chief cancelled
a major rally in downtown Skopje on Friday, reflecting fears it could spark
violence ahead of Macedonia's weekend elections.

The Democratic Union for Integration
(DUI) and its leader Ali Ahmeti took the decision under pressure from the
West, which hopes Sunday's poll will help cement peace in the volatile
Balkan country after last year's conflict.

Tension has increased in the weeks leading
up to the election to the 120-seat parliament, with incidents …

BELGRADE, May 8 (Reuters) - International
organisations launched a regional centre on Wednesday to try to cut down
the number of small arms in the Balkans, a region awash with weapons in
private hands after a decade of warfare and chaos.

The new clearing house in Belgrade, supported
by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the European Union's
Stability Pact for southeast Europe, is to work with governments in persuading
citizens to give up their arms.

"The problem is to create a secure
environment in a post-conflict zone where civilians …

CACERES, Spain, Feb 8 (Reuters)
- A tentative European Union plan to take over the NATO peacekeeping mission
in Macedonia appeared to run into trouble over objections from Finland
and doubts about Germany's willingness to lead the force.

NATO Secretary General George Robertson
was expected to be handed a formal request in Skopje on Friday for a three-month
extension of NATO's Operation Amber Fox from the end of March.

Spain and France have suggested that
the EU take over the operation from the 19-nation defence alliance when
that mandate ends in …

SKOPJE, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Macedonia's
government asked NATO troops on Wednesday to stay on for a further three
months to help cement a peace deal with ethnic Albanian rebels.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General George
Robertson said the 19-member alliance was willing to "pick up the
challenge" and said he would discuss the request during a visit to
the Balkan state on Thursday and Friday.

Robertson also told reporters there were
no plans for the European Union, vying for a bigger role in security policy,
to take over from NATO when the three-month mandate of the …

Multi-ethnic police units were able to
return to only a few villages out of 17 planned in the latest phase of
a scheme to gradually restore state sovereignty following last year's seven-
month-long insurgency.

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonians
never imagined they would need earphones to understand debate in parliament
or use a foreign language to buy food, but a new era distasteful to many
looms as the price of peace with rebel minority Albanians.

A veritable constitutional revolution
has been imposed by a Western-brokered peace accord with minority Albanian
guerrillas, whose February-August uprising for better civil rights brought
the tiny Balkan republic to its knees.

If the constitutional amendments recently
ratified by parliament are carried out, Macedonian's …

The amnesty, aimed at defusing ethnic
mistrust and enabling the return of police to rebel-dominated territory
in coming weeks, was decreed under Western diplomatic pressure last month
after weeks of nationalist obstruction.

SKOPJE (Reuters) - The Macedonian
parliament endorsed Friday Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's seventh
cabinet shuffle in three years, filling posts vacated by the breakup of
a ''unity'' coalition formed during wartime last May.

The defection of the moderate SDSM party
from the unwieldy broad coalition assembled under Western pressure in an
effort to stop an ethnic Albanian insurgency raised concerns that nationalists
would take over key security posts.

But the new ministers are seen as moderates
or ''cautious'' nationalists that should balance …

SKOPJE, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The
EU's top foreign policymakers postponed an international donor conference
for Macedonia on Thursday, accusing its government of breaking promises
to enact reforms quickly to defuse an ethnic Albanian rebellion.

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Hundreds of
Macedonian protesters blocked entrances to parliament on Friday, delaying
the start of a debate on reforms which would give ethnic Albanians more
rights under a NATO-backed deal aimed at averting civil war.

The protesters, who waved bright red
and yellow Macedonian flags and called on the government to resign, said
the peace plan was a sellout forced on Macedonians at gunpoint by Albanian
guerrillas.

"This blockade will go on as long
as necessary," said Straso Angelovski, the leader of a small nationalist
party organizing the …

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) -
NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo said on Wednesday a mortar bomb was fired
into Kosovo from Macedonia after an exchange of fire with a group of people
trying to illegally cross the border.